The Basics Behind The Arnold Schwarzenegger Workout
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We all know who Arnold Schwarzenegger is right?
Famous Hollywood action movie star and celebrity known for his fitness. Former governor of California, and oh yes, he’s also a former multi-time Mr Olympia winner. The Mr Olympia is the biggest bodybuilding contest in the entire world. If you win this contest, you’re the best bodybuilder in the world and Arnold won this contest on more than one occasion. He actually won on seven separate occasions, so it’s safe to say that he knows what he’s doing when it comes to bodybuilding and weight lifting.
Well, because of this, there is now, and has been for some time, an extremely effective workout named after Arnold himself, that is guaranteed to pack on pounds upon pounds of lean muscle mass.
Here’s a look at some of the basics behind this workout.
Focus on compound exercises
Compound exercises are basically exercises that work more than one muscle group at once, instead of isolating the muscle, and Arnold was a huge fan of compound exercises, and it’s safe to say that they proved pretty beneficial for him as well.
Compound exercises are mainly performed with free weights such as dumbbells or barbells, so try to make them to focal point of your workout.
By all means include some isolation exercises but the main focus should be on compound lifts such as the military press or the bench press, as you’re working more than one muscle group at once.
Always go to failure
With every single exercise, Arnold always used to go to absolute failure with each set, no matter what.
That means that if you do a certain exercise and you perform 8 reps, yet you could easily have performed a few more, you should perform those few more and should keep going until you can’t complete another rep.
As Arnold said “it’s the reps that the body is not used to that makes it grow”, so heed those words and train to failure.
(But be safe! Don’t do anything to risk injury)
Train heavy
By heavy we don’t mean stupid weights that you can barely lift for 1 whole rep, but rather weights that will test you, where you can generally perform around 6 – 8 reps before you begin to fail. Training heavy really puts stress on the muscle fibres and helps trigger muscle growth within the muscles themselves.
If you are training heavy, make sure you have a spotter on hand to help keep you safe.